Richard Branson was born July 18^th 1950 in Shamley Green, Surrey, England. Richard’s mother Eve had been, purely by coincidence, an airline stewardess (now known as a flight attendant) which at the time was considered a very glamorous job. Richard’s father was a lawyer. Growing up he and his two younger sisters were not accustomed to the opulence he now has in his life. But in his book he recounts that his childhood was happy and his parents encouraged the children to be independent and never intruded into their lives with unwanted advice unless they were invited.

Richard was not a remarkable pupil at school as he suffered with dyslexia and short sightedness both of which resulted in his poor academic performance. He attended Scaitcliffe School until he was thirteen and then went on to Stowe School until he was sixteen when it is rumoured his exit from the school was a case of “will you jump or shall we push?”

Branson’s first taste of business was when he was fifteen years old and thought that growing Christmas trees and then breeding budgerigars would make him rich, both ventures failed.

Undeterred, Richard moved to London at sixteen where he began his first successful business, a magazine, Student, following which he opened a charity called “Student Valley Centre”.

Richard’s first real money making business came in the form of records. He traveled across the English Channel to France, bought cheap records and brought them back to England to sell at a profit. He ran the small business from the boot of his car and later from his home as a mail order business. He used the name “Virgin” because the records were unused as opposed to store records which had been played in the record booths.

Eventually he opened his first store in Oxford Street, London and once again used the name ‘Virgin Records’ now known as Virgin Mega Sores. With the proceeds of his business he bought a country estate where he had a recording studio built and leased it out to Mike Oldfield the multi-instrumentalist whose music, Tubular Bells was used in The Exorcist starring Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair.

Unfortunately, Richard was to get his first taste of the English Tax system when he was arrested for not paying the correct tax on his record sales and agreeing to settle out of court with UK Customs and Excise which just about ended his business until his mother re-mortgaged her home to pay the settlement.

Along with big names like Mike Oldfield Virgin Records signed up the Sex Pistols and Boy George’s Culture Club.

After forming his airline, Virgin Atlantic Airways in 1984, Branson had to sell his record company in an effort to keep his airline flying. He was devastated at the sale as it had been his first successful business but later he went on to form V2 Records in order to re-enter the music business.

Following the success of the record and airline business Virgin set its sights on Virgin Trains which it took over from British Rail when the trains went privatized in the UK in 1997. However, his success in that area was not to be. Not due to his own business skills but due to he antiquated rolling stock and crumbling infrastructure it had inherited from British Rail.

Virgin has entered into just about every area of commerce conceivable in the past two decades, including Virgin Coke, Vie make-up, Virgin Vodka, Virgin Insurance, Virgin Mobile phones (which he sold for 1 million pounds in 2006) and a Nigerian based airline called Virgin Nigeria. In 2007 Branson began flights from San Francisco airport called Virgin America.

In 1992 Branson went to court to sue British Airways for liable and settled out of court for 500,00 pounds payable to Branson, 110,000 payable to his airline and 3 million for legal fees, all of which Richard shared out among his staff.

In 2006 Branons’ wealth was estimated at just over 3 billion pounds.

In the past few years Richard has launched a comic called Virgin Comics, a Virgin Health Bank for parents to-be to store umbilical cord blood stem cells for future use in medical issues, he sold his mobile phone company and became a 15% shareholder in the new company which now pays him 8.5 million per year to use the Virgin name. He is the company’s largest shareholder.

In February 2007 Richard committed $25 million as a prize for a practical plan to reduce greenhouse gasses and is a judge on the panel along with Al Gore and Tim Flannery.

Richard’s next venture with the Virgin group is Virgin fuel which is his response to global warming. In April 2007 Branson announced that he had bought a fleet of aircraft from Boeing which will use eco-friendly fuel after a meeting he had with Al Gore which convinced him that there really is a global warming problem of which he was previously a skeptic. He has pledged to invest the profits from Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains in research for environmentally friendly fuels amounting to an estimated $3 billion.

Branson’s maverick way of running his businesses has had him described as a ‘transformational leader’ with its bottom heavy management system rather than a top level management strangle-hold.

Richard is known to be flamboyant and competitive and as such has often put himself in the media spotlight with his activities, such as his attempt to fly across the Atlantic in record time in a hot air balloon in 1985, his 1991 hot air balloon flight across the Pacific Ocean, once again breaking all previous records and then Branson went on to try a record breaking flight around the world but was beaten by Brian Jones in Breitling Orbiter in March 1999.

During his high profile career Richard has also made numerous TV and Film appearances in, Friends, with Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry, Baywatch with Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff and Only Fools and Horses with David Jason and in Superman Returns with Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey and Brandon Routh where he was credited as a “Shuttle Engineer’. He also has a TV program on Fox called The Rebel Billionaire based on the format of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice.

Branson is a Star Trek fan, so much that he named his new spaceship VSS Enterprise in honour of the famous Star Trek ships, and in 2006, offered actor William Shatner a free ride on the inaugural space launch of the Virgin Galactic

In 2006 Virgin Airlines was used as a “product placement” in the 2006 James Bond movie Casino Royale starring Daniel Craig and Eva Green by showing Branson himself being screened by security, but when the movie was shown on board British Airways the airline blanked out the Virgin CEO. When asked about the decision by B.A. while being interviewed by Richard Quest on CNN, Richard Branson said that the same decision would not have been made the other way around, he said he would not have been that childish. The rivalry between the two major British airlines continues.

In 1997 when Tony Blair’s government came to power he was seen a supporter but has since declared that there is little to chose between the Labour and Conservative party. He has on a number of occasions intimated that he may run for Mayor of London but has never done so.

In the late 1990’s he made an attempt to run the country’s National Lottery where he said he would donate all the proceeds to charity but his bid did not win and Camelot continued to run the lottery.

Richard is a devoted father and husband. He adores his daughter Holly, 21, a medical student whom the British tabloids linked with Prince William a few years back. He has a son, Sam, who opened a nightclub after he graduated. Richard is devoted to Joan, his wife of 13 years and companion of nearly 30 years. Joan is credited with keeping the children out of the public eye.

In 1999 Richard was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for “services to entrepreneurship”.

Sir Richard Branson rates at 85^th in the 100 Greatest Britons.

ABB